Finding Aid

Digital Surrogates: Except where indicated, this document describes but does not reproduce the actual text, images and objects which make up this collection. Materials are available only in the Special Collections Department.

Use of Collections: The University of Iowa Libraries supports access to the materials, published and unpublished, in its collections. Nonetheless, access to some items may be restricted by their fragile condition or by contractual agreement with donors, and it may not be possible at all times to provide appropriate machinery for reading, viewing or accessing non-paper-based materials. Please read our Use of Manuscripts Statement.

Acquisition and Processing Information: These papers were donated to University Archives from Dr. Folk in September 2000. Finding aid posted to the Internet in May 2011.

The George Edgar Folk papers include materials about the Research Club of faculty members. It also includes the manuscript for the first issue of the International Journal of Bioclimatology and Biometeorology, 1957. One oversized item is a photograph of cells made with a Color Phase Interference Microscope. The microscope was donated by Dr. Folk to the Department of Pathology.

Biographical Note

George Edgar Folk, Jr., was born on November 12, 1914, in Natick, Massachusetts. He graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, in 1933. He received the B.A. (1937), M.A. (1940), and Ph.D. (1947) degrees in biology from Harvard University. Following graduation, Folk taught courses at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, for six years.

Folk joined the State University of Iowa faculty as associate professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics in 1953. He was made full professor in 1965. In 1957, Folk was one of the founders of the International Journal of Bioclimatology and Biometeorology. His research took him to the Arctic each summer from 1970 through 1982, where he and his students studied how mammals functioned in the environment. Folk was the recipient of the University of Iowa Teacher of the Year Award in 1983. He served as a consultant for the United States Army during the late 1940s and early 1950s on the topic of "Moisture Relations Between the Human Foot and Its Environment." Folk retired from the University of Iowa in 1985.

Folk married Mary Arp in June 1956. He had one son, Christopher, and one daughter, Victoria, from a previous marriage. Following Mary's death, Folk married Bessie Beresford Kueny.